Background: School recess offers students a break from the rigors and immobility of academic learning, and a chance for social interaction, play, and physical activity. The recess literature is based on elementary schools, with little attention to older students. Early adolescents also need school breaks, and this study offers some of the first…

The practice of temporarily removing students from school as a form of punishment (i.e., suspensions) remains quite common. This study uses longitudinal data from a large, urban school district in California to assess whether the use of suspensions improves school safety in the following school year. Additional analyses by student race and…

This paper examines the extent to which transgender students' experiences with school-based victimization and school protective factors contribute to or reduce substance use. We conducted secondary analyses of school-based victimization, school protective factors, and substance use of a subsample of transgender students from the 2013-2015…

Improving school climate remains a priority for improving academic achievement and social emotional learning, and for reducing violence and promoting safe schools. This study examined staff member experiences of school climate with the goal of identifying the quality of climate (negative or positive) that staff experience and how certain…

Academic self-efficacy is a student's belief about their ability to learn or to perform within a school environment. This paper captures differential trends in academic self-efficacy by gender using self-efficacy survey data from five large districts in California from the 2014-15 through 2017-18 school years. We find that female students report…

This is the executive summary for the report, "Is California Doing Enough to Close the School Discipline Gap?" In California, a combination of statewide and local efforts has been implemented to reduce the use of punitive suspensions in public K-12 schools. Current state data trends reflect these efforts, showing that far fewer students…

This research provides a unique seven-year trend analysis indicating that, while California has seen a decline in the use of suspensions in schools prior to the pandemic, the pace of the decline has slowed and large racial disparities in suspension rates remain. The research supports renewed advocacy efforts to eliminate schools' use of security…

We analyze how fatal shootings in high schools affect schools and students using data from shooting databases, school report cards, and the Common Core of Data. We examine schools' test scores, enrollment, number of teachers, graduation, attendance, and suspension rates at schools that experienced a shooting, employing a difference-in-differences…

School counselors help foster student's academic, social, and career development; yet, school counselors are often neglected in research on school climate and student safety. Framed by the theory of planned behavior, this study examined how 206 school counselors' multicultural counseling competence, multicultural self-efficacy, and perceptions of…

Using participatory visual research methods, this study examined how certain low-income, urban youth in a high-minority middle school characterized safe and unsafe spaces on campus. Drawing from a convenience sample of identified gifted students in one classroom (N = 20), results suggested how caring support from adults, friendly peer…

There is growing attention to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning (LGBTQ) issues in schools, including efforts to address such issues through the curriculum. This study examines whether students' perceptions of personal safety and school climate safety are stronger when curricula that include LGBTQ people are present and…

A growing number of states and school districts use school climate assessments in progress reporting systems and are interested in incorporating these assessments into accountability systems. This analysis of response data from middle school students and teachers on the California School Climate, Health, and Learning Survey examines the…

Emerging evidence suggests that lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning (LGBTQ) youth experience disparate treatment in schools that may result in criminal sanctions. In an effort to understand the pathways that push youth out of schools, we conducted focus groups with youth (n = 31) from Arizona, California, and Georgia, and…

Seven schools in an economically challenged area of an urban school district in central California implemented mentored peer mediation programs under the guidance of a university-K-12 partnership project, Mediator Mentors. Individual student outcomes for social-cognitive dispositions, perceptions of school climate, conflict strategy choices, and…

Few studies have investigated school connectedness from the perspectives of the adults working in the school. Using qualitative methods, the present study examined three dimensions of school connectedness in one urban, low-income middle school. Analyses revealed that school personnel cared for students' needs, sometimes at the expense of holding…